Tag Archives: steam

If you use Linux and wanted to play Dota 2 but have been discouraged by the limited graphics performance of integrated Intel HD graphics card, this post is for you. Intel HD 3000 is an integrated graphics card that came with Sandybridge processors. By default it is barely able to run Dota 2. With following settings, you should be able to play Dota 2 at an average speed of 30 FPS or above. The trick is to lower the graphics settings to make the game run faster. If you have newer processors you should get even better performance.

Introduction

In this tutorial, I will talk about installing steamos in virtualbox. The reason, I wanted to do this was to play around and see how they have put together a debian distribution. One thing, I noticed from my installation was, despite valve’s suggestion in their FAQ, I would not recommend executing ~/post_logon.sh after installation, because it removed dkms and necessary drivers, that were necessary to boot the OS. I guess, this step was the step to make steamos boot directly into big picture mode. In our case, you will have to select SteamOS from login manager and login into user account named steam to login to the big picture mode. If you want to run above script anyway, at least make a copy of the vdi file, after you have updated the steam client. File size is no more than 4G, if you have selected dynamically expanding disk in virtualbox. Also, as suggested by some posts, there was no need for me to remove nvidia binaries after installation.

Most modern laptops with intel processors after sandy bridge, comes with its own graphics card (or graphics memory). If you happen to purchase such laptop with discrete graphics card from AMD or Nvidia, your configuration becomes a hybrid graphics setup. Hybrid graphics cards have long and painful history under Linux. Therefore, if you don’t follow the usual channel (your operating system provided) of installing it, you might run into lots of problems because of inconsistencies between Xorg/mesa, graphics vendor drivers and the kernel. In this tutorial, I will talk about different approaches I take while installing the driver. This tutorial is valid for Elementary OS/Ubuntu and other ubuntu derivatives as well.

Introduction

In this tutorial, I will try to explain how to install catalyst driver, fix switching problems (specially opengl part on intel cards) and some steam bugs. One reason to do this tutorial was because catalyst 13series was not very good on my hardware in Ubuntu 13.04 or Mint 15. So, lets get started